Thetownend.com

Interesting goings on at Chester, also :

CHESTER CITY - THE TAX MAN BITES BACK

From www.twohundrepercent.net

Upon first sight, it may seem surprising that a victory for the tax man should
be greeted with the faintly audible sound of cheering in the distance but such
was the mess that is Chester City Football Club that it feels increasingly as if
their demise is the only way that the game will rid itself of their owner,
Stephen Vaughan. The question of which Stephen Vaughan we are talking about is,
of course, a moot point since his son took a directorship at the club earlier
this year in place of his father. What has become increasingly apparent over the
last few weeks is that the authorities have become increasingly impatient with
the goings-on at The Deva Stadium, and the situation took a turn for the worse
for the club's supporters earlier this week.

Since the club put itself into administration earlier this summer, there had
been a hint that all was not what it might be at Chester City Football Club.
This was most starkly exposed by the Football Association's refusal to grant the
club a licence to play, even in pre-season friendlies. The club thought that it
had agreed an escape route to its insolvency with a CVA, but this was challenged
by Her Majesty's Revenues and Customs at court this week and, in a move that
seems to demonstrates just how far down the line Chester are at the moment, HMRC
won their case with an objection against the CVA at court on Wednesday. The club
is now back in administration, without a licence to play from the Football
Association and with just weeks to go before the start of the new season.

What, then, were HMRC objecting to? Insolvency laws relating to Company
Voluntary Arrangements are pretty specific, and HMRC lost their legal status as
a preferred creditor several years ago. The amount believed to be owed by
Chester City to HMRC was in the region of GBP1m. It's a sizeable amount of
money, and under normal circumstances it might have given HMRC a blocking vote
against any proposed CVA (any creditor owed more than 25% of the total amount of
money to be included in the CVA can block the approval of the arrangement). In
the case of Chester City, however, there were GBP4m of other debts to be taken
into account. The HMRC could vote, but they didn't have a blocking vote in the
case of the Chester City CVA. The arrangement was agreed at a creditors' meeting
on June 11th.

So far, so good, then. Nothing illegal going on - a little side-stepping to get
around the rules on insolvency and the ownership of football clubs, perhaps, but
nothing we haven't seen before. What was extraordinary, however, was this post
on the Conference Forum yesterday morning. Could it be true that Chester City
Football Club spent GBP143, 750 on services to a company called Hannah
Industrial Services that was only formed in February 2009? A cleaning bill of
over GBP11,000 per week? The cold feet of the Football Association and the
blocking tactics of HMRC suddenly start to make a good deal more sense, as does
Judge Pelling QC's decision to revoke the arrangement. The 1986 Insolvency Act
only allows two specific grounds for the revoking of a CVA - either the CVA
unfairly prejudices the interests of a creditor or shareholder, or there has
been some material irregularity at the shareholders' or creditors' meeting. The
judge's verdict, therefore, was a damning indictment of whatever has been going
on at Chester over the last few months or so.

Now is surely the time for Chester City supporters to admit that this club and
this regime is nothing that they can conscionably be involved with. Their club
may yet stagger and lurch into the new season, bloodied, bruised and carrying a
hopelessly punitive points deduction. They may not, though, and it's difficult
to see where their salvation will come from at this point. The timing couldn't
come at a much worse time, of course. Any new club in Chester would almost
certainly have no League to play in for a year. As things stand, however, the
existing Chester City club seem unlikely to be starting next season either. The
time might be right for the club's supporters to step back from their
predicament and take control of their own destinies.

Chester will be kicked out of the Conference on Monday at 5:30 if they do not pay Wrexham for their portion of gate receipts or pay for the loan of a player from Vauxhall motors.

As Gazza as bought back the story :

CHESTER CITY FOOTBALL CLUB – THE DEATH RATTLE (PART ONE) From www.twohundredpercent.net

Chester Fans United, a coming together of the different fans’ groups at the stricken Blue Square Premier club, meet tomorrow night to formally agree their formation. They have a few thousand pounds in the bank, which is enough to get them up and running, but it certainly isn’t enough to save their club and the general consensus now is that they already know it. A new deadline has been set. By 5.30 on Monday evening, Chester City may well have ceased to exist. At this point, CFU’s raison d’etre will become to form a new club, freed from the shackles of the wretched ownership that they have suffered under for the last few seasons or so.

The latest threat to their existence comes from the Football Conference, who have issued a complete player embargo upon the club and the deadline to pay up over unpaid bills to other clubs – a split of gate receipts that was due to be paid to their local rivals Wrexham, and has also failed to make any payment to another club, Vauxhall Motors, for a player that they took on loan. The amount of money owed to the two clubs is believed to be in the region of GBP30,000-GBP40,000. They also make reference to, more generally, Chester City’s non-compliance “with the terms of the compromise agreement set by the Football Conference to allow the club to participate in the competition at the commencement of the current season”.

One might wonder what the mish-mash of authorities that actually allowed the club to start the season were actually thinking of when they arrived at the decision. The financial situation at The Deva Stadium was clear for anyone to see at this point. What Stephen Vaughan said to them in the course of the meeting that ended up with the club being allowed to play has never been made public. It has even been suggested that the Football League leant on the Football Conference because they didn’t want to see a club dropping straight out and going bust.

When previous manager Mick Wadsworth left the club last month, he commented that, “This place is full of negativity and it’s really difficult. I’ve never known an environment like it”. This was coming from a man that had managed at Scarborough, Gretna and at Carlisle United under Michael Knighton during the 1990s. This sort of a statement, coming from a man that had left his previous managerial position after becoming one of forty people to be laid off because they couldn’t afford to pay him any more, spoke volumes for the depth of the difficulties at the club. Crowds have plummeted again and, even if they were to survive this particular crisis and the other crises that would inevitably follow it over the course of the remainder of the season, relegation to the Blue Square North is surely something approaching inevitable.

It’s possible to argue that Chester supporters should have acted earlier, but the clubs owner’s actions over the last few weeks would seem to indicate that they could have protested all they wanted and for as long as possibly could have and he still wouldn’t have left the club. The rumours continue to circle that John Batchelor, who almost drove York City to the wall several years ago, is circling with a desire to rip up the history of the club and “re-brand” it as Harchester United or Red Bull Chester City.
Any Chester supporters hoping that Batchelor might be a knight in shining armour should take a moment to read this, from The Guardian last year: “Of
24 companies of which he has been a director, 14 have been or are about to be struck off the companies register, six have been insolvent, three are still going but he is no longer involved – he says he sold them on successfully – and only one small company in which he is a director is active. One company Batchelor took over – although he did not become a director; his partner, Cheryl Hopkins, did – was Moornate Chemists in Nelson, near Burnley, a steady, solvent, family business selling cleaning products. Within three months, last July, Moornate was insolvent and in administration, after effectively being merged with another company he took over, Besglos, which was also in administration the following month.”

David Brown, Moornate’s former owner, says Batchelor promised to pay him GBP485,000 for the business, in instalments, and did pay him GBP70,000 up front. However, he has been left devastated, without the business he built up over 30 years, and still owed GBP415,000 of the price agreed.
Batchelor, however, has said he bought and sold Moornate’s factory, making GBP75,000 for himself.

“He ruins people’s lives and walks away with money,” Brown says. Several former staff of Besglos, and their families, are still struggling to recover, having moved to work for Batchelor on the promise of handsome salaries, then been left unpaid and lost their jobs. Brown recalls that in one meeting Batchelor told him: “This is what I do for a living: I f#@k companies.”

Of course, any talk of Batchelor getting involved is likely to be irrelevant, since Vaughan has shown no intention whatsoever of giving up control of the club and, in any case, there is entirely possible that there will not even be a Chester City Football Club by the middle of next week. Ironically, Chester’s next (and possibly last) match will be an FA Cup match at Barrow on Saturday. Barrow, of course, are the club that Vaughan almost sent to the wall in his previous attempt at running a club, during the late 1990s. It will be interesting to see how quickly they give them their split of the gate receipts for the match. One would imagine that Vaughan will be knocking on the office doors at Holker Street at about ten to five on Saturday afternoon. Even if he gets the money in used fivers, however, it is unlikely to be enough in itself to keep them afloat.

Miracles do happen and they happen more regularly in football, it often seems, than anywhere else. This time, however, Stephen Vaughan has annoyed the Football Conference off (that much is evident from the terseness of their official message on the subject) and in the modern game it seems that you can bend the insolvency laws as much as you like, keep your ownership structure buried under impenetrable layers of holding companies, mess the tax man (and, by extension, the taxpayer) around and treat your supporters with little more than contempt, but if you get on the wrong side of the people that run the game, then you’ve done something very wrong indeed and you are likely to pay for it. Chester Fans United deserve our support for getting their act together and one would hope that they would decide not to throw money onto the bonfire that is Chester City Football Club. It is surely clear that a new club is the only way forward for the supporters of Chester City.

Now been served a WUP by HMRC :

http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/59306/notices/1017019

They may as well fold. As harsh as it is, They will be in the Conference North next season, crowds well below 2,000 now, likely to be kicked out of the conference the way of Boston United into the Unibond Northern Premier League due to their debts and not paying players. That said I beleive new owners are looking to take charge.

Reading this article makes what's going on at Pompey look sane :

From www.twohundredpercent.net

Since we last reported from Chester City, much has happened and nothing has
changed. At the same time, owner Stephen Vaughan was due to have ceded all
control in the club by the middle of December having been disqualified as a
company director after an investigation by the Insolvency Service's
Disqualification Investigation Team over alleged carousel fraud. Casual
observers may have been forgiven, however, for continuing to hold the impression
that not a great deal has changed at The Deva Stadium over the last month or so.
Over the last couple of weeks, however, things have started to become farcical
there.

First of all came the arrival of Morell Maison, fresh from his disastrous spell
at Halesowen Town, which left the Southern League club teetering on the brink of
closure, banned from FA competitions this year after they failed to pay
Maisdtone United and Durham City gate receipts from matches against them last
year in the FA Cup and the FA Trophy (which left a particularly bitter taste in
the case of Durham, who had to release all of their players during the summer
after the withdrawal of a sponsor, leaving them gamely but distastrously
battling away at the bottom of the UniBond League Premier Division with a youth
team) and boycotted by their own supporters.

Maison didn't seem particularly clear on what his role at the club actually was.
His official title seems to be "Director Of Football", but according to
subsequent press interviews he still hasn't met the players yet. The question of
why a club would be taking on a Director of Football when the players hadn't
been paid for two months wasn't, unsurprisingly, answered by the club itself.
Maison started his time at the club with an interview on BBC London's Non-League
Show on the 4th of January. He stated - at first - that the club was still under
the ownership of both Stephen Vaughan Junior and Senior (news that may have been
of interest to the FA as well as the Insolvency Service) before amending this
statement to say that Vaughan Senior hadn't been involved in his appointment. He
then went on to state that he wasn't being paid for his position and that he
wouldn't be getting involved in issues on the playing side of the football club.
He contradicted himself on one of these statements within the body of the
interview (claiming to have signed two players on loan from Mansfield Town), and
the truth behind the other started to come out in the next few days.

By the end of the week, the truth was starting to emerge, as rumours began to
circulate that Maison had paid GBP75,000 for a share in the club, though details
remain sketchy over whether this has actually taken place or what he may have
paid for. It would have been interesting to hear his interview at the bank for
that particular loan. At the same time, manager Jim Harvey gave up the ghost and
left the club. Reports on BBC Radio Merseyside again linked Vaughan Senior with
the running of the club, stating that it was he that had told Harvey that he had
no future at the club. At the same time, Cambridge United were have reported to
have reported the club over non-payment for loan players that the Chester took
from them during the first half of this season.

It seems that these are the straws that are finally breaking the camel's back.
There is now open talk on the club's forum, Devachat, of a breakaway club with
the major sticking point between supporters now being whether they should go now
in order to be prepared for the start of next season or wait to see if or when
the club goes bust in order to secure a lease on The Deva Stadium. It seems
unlikely that they will get a lease on what they would regard as their home
until the old club has finally vacated it, unless the local council step in and
evict Chester City. Whether they would be able to do this legally would depend
on the terms of the lease. Meanwhile, it now seems likely that everything will
be done in order for Chester to complete their fixtures this season. It has been
mentioned that the survival of the club for this season is likely to be ensured,
but where they go at the end of the season is very much open to question. The
Football Conference has a deal that it brokered with the Football League for two
promotion and relegation places, and it doesn't wish to jeopardise them. At the
end of the season, though, with relegation seeming a near certainty, what
exactly will happen?

Even allowing for the absurd and flagrant abuses of the rules that they have
already piled up this season and the extent to which they have got away with it,
it seems scarcely credible that the club will not have the book thrown at it
once 2009/10 is out of the way. The issues of ownership, non-payment of football
debts and the manner in which it started the season would seem to indicate that
expulsion from the Conference is likely and that the club would have to start
next season in the UniBond League Premier Division at best. There is precedent
for this, in the case of Boston United a couple of years ago. Boston, a club of
a similar size to Chester, remain in the middle of the UniBond League - proof,
as if it were needed, that the long-haul back to the Football League is
something that has to be worked for rather than a series of rights of accession.

Even if it didn't, relegation from the Blue Square Premier at the end of this
season is already almost inevitable - the club would need around forty-five to
fifty points from their remaining matches to have anything like a realistic
chance of avoiding relegation. Players seem to be leaving on an almost daily
basis, and the club will be unlikely to make much revenue from match days if a
full boycott. Ultimately, however, the charade of anybody at the club actually
giving a damn about the supporters of the club vanished a long time ago. It is
now the football authorities that the club's owners have to persuade. They have
played them off for mugs several times before - will they be able to get away
with it yet again?

And in the comments section of the blog, was this gem: Facebook can be a useful
site to keep in touch with friends etc, but also a wonderful repository of
gubbins. Ladies & gents, I give you the Morell Maison fan page:
www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=3789940128

As a Cambridge United fan, I'm still amazed we let Mark Beasley go on loan to
Chester, as anyone with half a brain can work out that the club have no money.
At our fans forum, any worries about the loan were brushed off with a "we are
football creditor, don't worry" response. I wish no ill to the fans of Chester,
but if this is another nail in the coffin of Stephen Vaughn FC, then so be it.
AFC Chester is only option.

Chester's game tonight at Forest Green postponed, due to the players refusing to get on the team bus !!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_conf/8493550.stm

... that'll be that then for Chester City.

That will be a 3 point penalty/forfeit then by the look of it then to add to the woes.

Can Forest Green sue them for the cost of the pies going to waste?

I may be wrong, but I think the penalties for not fulfilling a fixture are significantly greater than a 3 point penalty

...and Chester have already had a match abandoned this season so they are in big trouble.

They'll get thrown out this time. I work with a Chester fan, he's prepared for it, just wants rid of the idiots running the club.

Chester are likely to be kicked out of the Conferece now surely. Even the Chester fans are saying they should be kicked out as its not fair for the integrity of the game. THe players have not been paid for 3 months, they have a Sunday league manager as boss, no chance of staying up. Fans have boycotted games and seen attendances aroudn 500. Chester fans want CCFC to be wound up so they can start their own team for the 2010/11 season. In theory if they get a team together now they could join 1 stage below the conference north (as you have to start atleast 2 divisions below where you are in the football pyramid) and be on a sound financial footing.

http://www.devachat.com/

Seems like the FA/Conference/FL are desperate to keep Chester going at least till the end of the season, no matter how flagrant their breaches of any/all rules. It's a series of horrendous failures to enforce the regs, initially it seems because the FL/FA didn't want to have a League club fall out of the League and go pop immediately. So on the one hand they withheld the League parachute payment because of outstanding questions around the ownership of Chester (basically whether the money would just get ripped off), but on the other leant on the Conference not to push them too hard in case they went bust half way through and could then point the finger at the League. And while the authorities have dithered and vascillated in the hope that Chester would quietly die in the close season (and so leave them with "clean hands"), they've left some of the worst owners in the League/non-League structure to rape the club. Absolute fucking disgrace. The whole episode typifies at the bottom of the scale, as Portsmouth does at the top, why the last people fans can look to for help when their club is being torn apart are the very authorities charged with preserving the "integrity of the game". They should all hang their heads in shame.

Football is in for a very rough period - you can only hope that most clubs survive and most of the administrators/regulators, who have so woefully failed the game, the clubs and the fans, don't

Have cancelled their home derby against Wrexham Saturday as police refused to police the game and theThe council has served a prohibition notice on the Deva Stadium preventing spectators from entering the ground after the police refused to staff the match.

http://www.chesterchronicle.co.uk/chester-city-fc/chester-city-fc-news/2010/02/10/chester-city-fc-sunday-s-deva-stadium-derby-called-off-59067-25805586/

It is surely all over for Chester now.

Expected to be kicked out of the conference this afternoon.

How long before the football league has a simmilar situation at the bottom of League 2?

Kick them out let the fan's form AFC Chester with the help of the league (yea right) and their local council I just feel for the fan's, they have accepted the club is dead and are making plans but the authorities are scared to make the call

CHESTER CITY: THE TRUTH OF THE DEBT REVEALED
From www.twohundredpercent.net

The story of the winding down of Chester City has been gathering pace all day.
The club's expulsion from the Football Conference now seems close to inevitable
after it was confirmed that their match against Wrexham this Sunday was
cancelled after a prohibition notice was served on the club by Chester Trading
Standards office. The local council had been informed that there would be no
policing in and around The Deva Stadium for the match, and they have issued a
warning to travelling Wrexham supporters that they will not be admitted into the
stadium should they turn up there. Unbelievably (or, if you look at it that way,
very much believably), the club's managing director, Bob Gray, turned up on the
local news this evening, saying that the club would be starting next season even
if expelled from the Blue Square Premier tomorrow. No supporters, no income, no
League, but they will keep playing, according to Gray. Unbelievable. Providing,
of course, that they can pay off their creditors.

And the issue of the creditors of Chester City Football Club is a very
interesting one. As long-time readers will be aware, Chester City (2004) Ltd is
the company that owns the club, and the name is a misleading one. The company
only took the ownership of the club in the summer last year, with the blessing
of the Football Conference, the Football League and the Football Association. It
has only been trading since last summer, after the old company that owned the
club had its CVA thrown out by a court following a challenge from HMRC. On the
BBC's North-West Tonight news programme this, it was confirmed that the club's
current total debt - an extraordinary figure and one that has caused bafflement
and amusement amongst Chester supporters - currently stands at GBP703,000. The
BBC didn't have the time to go into the details of how this was made up, but the
good news is that we have also got a copy of what we presume to be the same
document and, well, we've got all evening.

So, here we go, then. The two pages list the clubs creditors and debtors. The
debtors, we can discuss pretty briefly. They list the Football League as a
debtor (GBP127,000 for a parachute payment) and the Football Conference
(GBP10,000 for central funding). It would be interesting to see the contract
that promises Chester City this money. If the organisations concerned withhold
that money, the only legal recourse that CCFC 2004 Ltd would have would be to
take them to court but, if they attempted to that, they would be expelled from
all football. To list that money as a debt owed to them (and, therefore, an
asset of the company) is misleading, to say the least.

The list of creditors, however, is what should interest us the most. How does a
non-League that has effectively been trading for a few months run up debts of
over GBP700,000? They owe just over GBP53,000 to HMRC - the GBP26,000 that they
face a winding-up petition over, plus just over the same again for having
continued to not pay their tax bill. They owe just over GBP33,500 to the local
council for rental and business rates owed for use of The Deva Stadium. Their
utility bills make up just shy of GBP10,000, for the gas, electric and the
telephone. Their trading losses amount to just under GBP10,000 as well,
including the coach company, rates on their training ground, an insurance
company (for an operation on a player) and programme printing, among other
things. Their football debts (which couldn't be included in any CVA) total just
over GBP78,000 and include just over GBP50,000 in unpaid wages and almost
GBP14,000 for contract terminations. The staff - the people that have stood
behind the Vaughans throughout this time - are owed almost GBP33,000. The
stand-out figure, the figure that almost takes one's breath away with its sheer
audacity, though, is near the bottom of the page. It reads as follows:

Vaughan Family - Payments/Loans IN to Chester City 2004 Ltd: GBP485,911.19

Let's just take a moment to clarify that. The Vaughan Family is claiming to have
put GBP485,911.19 into Chester City 2004 Ltd. A company that has only
effectively been trading since last summer. This statement almost raises more
questions than it answers. Where has this money gone? Because it seems, from the
list of other creditors, that precious few of the club's other financial
obligations have been being met over the same period of time - especially if we
consider that other revenue such as season ticket sales, gate money and so on
will have been coming into the club over much of this period. This is such a
staggeringly large amount of money that it seems scarcely credible. CCFC 2004
was incorporated in 2004, but was effectively non-trading until its Football
Conference place was transferred into its name during the summer. It is, to be
blunt, pi$$ing in the wind to even ask the question, never mind expect an
answer, but the club should at least answer the question of when this money was
put into the club and what it might have been spent upon. We'll probably have a
long wait.

Still, at least one aspect of the conditions of the sale of the club becomes
apparent now. Anybody wanting to purchase Chester City for GBP1 had to satisfy
four criteria that had been dictated to solicitors Brabner-Schaffer-Street by
the current owners, and number one on the list was this:

1. Proof of funding of a minimum of GBP500,000 cash, to both satisfy club
creditors and to fund the club going forward.

Half a million pounds, hmm? Just enough to make the Vaughans a tidy little
pay-off in return for finally ceding control of the club. No wonder it was
number one on the list of conditions - unless, of course, they were going to use
this money to pay off their other creditors and then themselves, of course.
Which, you know, they might have done. This would be the right thing to do,
after all. The Vaughan Family, therefore, makes up just over two-thirds of the
new company's current debt. Of course, these amounts are somewhat academic now.
The club has such a paucity of liquidity at present that it cannot travel to
away matches or afford to police its home matches. The end is surely nigh.

There are, however, vultures already circling. Key to the development of a new
club for the supporters is what happens to The Deva Stadium, and Mike Harris of
the Welsh Premier League side The New Saints already seems to be preparing his
move. The club's official website stated this afternoon that TNS are ""We are
exploring all options at the moment, of which ground-sharing with Chester is
one". Harris was behind the merger of TNS with Oswestry Town in 2003, a move
that was blocked at first by UEFA on the grounds that the two clubs are from
different countries before they reconsidered on the grounds that Oswestry's
history was tied up with the history of Welsh football. One wonders whether they
will take the same viewpoint should TNS try to muscle in on The Deva Stadium,
and would hope that similar rules should apply. Approximately two-thirds of The
Deva Stadium lies geographically in Wales, but the existence of the stadium is
intrinsically linked to Chester City and the supporters of that club. It is
likely that the final decision will rest with the council. Can they be trusted
to do the right thing? We shall see.

The Football Conference is expected to make its final decision over the future
of the club tomorrow, and it would be an absolute dereliction of duty were they
not to expel them. It is action that they should have taken last summer, and the
quicker it is finalised, the quicker Chester Fans United can get on with picking
up the pieces and getting back to what they, like all Chester City supporters,
want - to be able to start to forget about this whole sorry mess and get back on
with the football, which, ultimately, this is supposed to all be about. They can
wash their hands of the Vaughans and the disaster that has been wreaked upon
their club. It won't be easy, but there will be plenty of support for them and
the long fight back to the Blue Square Premier will be an adventure. All they
have to do is keep one eye on the sky, and not let the vultures snatch it away
from them.

I see the Football Conference still cannot make a decision...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/chester/8471345.stm

This is getting painful now, just end it and let the fans start a new team.

Just when you thought it was all over, some Danes turn up :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/chester/8528004.stm

And a good blog on these Danes :

http://www.twohundredpercent.net/?p=4565

As they used to say in the Dark Ages ...

Apparently dodgy ads fuck according to CFU. They have no business plan or funds to sort the issues out. CFU have said they want nothing to do with the danish and have said they can join them in a joint venture to start a new club.

I must say it has all the hallmarks of a classical false dawn. The main one being why on earth this foreign consortium would want to take over a side like Chester City.

For further reading: BEST Holdings.

The CFU have pretty much accepted that the club is dead and they want to hurry things along so they can form Chester F.C.

Isn't that a bit contradictory?

Sorry re-phrase that. They don't want the danes to run the club as they do not have the resources to pick up the remains of Chester City FC and make a good go of it and pay off the debts whilst re-connecting with the community however the danes are more than welcome to assist CFU who want to start their own club debt free etc and connect with the community. Basically after years of shit management from the Vaughan family, The CFU want to run whatever club is representing Chester because if the danes do it, it is only prolonging the inevitable demise of the current Chester City FC and will all end in tears. Reading DEVA CHAT. doesnt seem as if anyone wants the current club to be saved anyway and they want to start afresh,  infact most people are hoping the current club is wound up and is kicked out of the conference, thats how bad it is!

When people get this desperate you always get a hall of mirrors.

Not surprising, the Conference board are an absolute joke, its run by a bunch of complete muppets.

Its ludicrous that we've got a match scheduled against Chester tomorrow, and we won't know possibly until Saturday lunchtime whether its going to go ahead or not.

An administration fit for purpose would not have allowed this situation to arise. They didn't restrict the causes of these problems, and they are doing very little to come to some kind of resolution.

On a separate, but related, issue, take a look at the communication between the Conference and Imraan Ladak, former chairman of Kettering:

http://www.ketteringtownfc.co.uk/story.php?story_id=414

That is absolutely brilliant. Now been removed "At the request of the conference" so for those who didn't manage to see it in time:

Seems Chester have been expelled from the league then.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/chester/8538236.stm

Hopefully that will get rid of the dodgy Danes and allow CFU to rebuild their club. Best of luck to them and all the authorities who failed them (FA, FL and the Conference) should hang their heads in shame.

Yes, best of luck to them. My Granddad, who used to follow the club and go there in their Sealand Road days, would be shaking his head at what has gone on there in recent years.

I hope they can rebuild. IMO it will be tricky, what with the city being so close to Liverpool and Manchester in this Premier League obsessed age. I wish them all the best.

Means Oxford's lead increases to 6 points - they've played and beaten Chester once whilst Stevenage have played and beaten them twice. Luton do well as they've drawn against Chester twice as do Wimbledon who played them once and lost.

Can they appeal against the ruling?

No, ruling is final. Chester didnt even show up to the meeting to confirm them being kicked out which shows how much CCFC owners care. Ill never forget the game a couple yrs ago on the Friday night. Stuck in traffic all the way up there and us taking 800 fans to their place, no pies, no pubs but what a day out. RIP CCFC

I'll never forget the second half. Nor will Tails

...and of course, you being interviewed on sky sports afterwards and coming across like a complete mong.

To be honest, their support has always been pretty shoddy. Competition is tough up there, but it is a big place.

Their ground is owned by the conference and the fans team should get it back. But do they really want it? Its a fairly crap location, and hardly a good ground either.

What is impressive is that the CFU meetings have had attendances of 350 people. Im sure people on here can tell you how tough it is to get fans to turn out for meetings like that (and with good reason, not exactly fun is it). They could come back stronger than what they were.

:D At least we got to see a goal!

Heh! heh!






mong 8)

I think they're finished...down the same hole as nearby New Brighton (rip 1923 -50)

Stevenage will be on level games played though. I t was always likely Oxford would have won their second game against Chester so no difference really.

at least he's consistant

Apparently they've been wound up by the High Court for not paying HMRC...

Chester Fans are over the moon at this news because they can start fresh without Steven Vaughan. CCFC representatives never bothered to show up at the conference meeting where the club was kicked out of the BSP or at the court hearing today. They knew the end was nigh.

Cardiff and Southend escaped by the skin today. Pretty amazing just how many southend fans dont think there is a problem, but looking from the outside they are being completely screwed over and will be lucky to survive.